Games, by their very nature, are pointless. They are specifically made to be done for now reason other than enjoyment. The only goal of playing one is to play it. And the only goal once you’re in the game is to win. That’s weird, right?

Games without winning

Let’s just cut straight to the part people are going to bring up: not all games have winners. TTRPGs are famous for not having a victory condition. Co-op games don’t let individual players win, but they do have a collective win condition. Some party games have no real end game, but do let you keep playing. For example, if you’re playing Apples to Apples, you kind of just keep playing until you want to stop. There’s a victory condition set, but it’s pretty obvious it’s more of a suggestion than a rule. However, even if these games don’t have winners or win conditions, they still have victories, and they still have goals.

Winning is a goal

Winning is what you’re supposed to do. If a game wants you to do something, they will tell you that doing that thing wins you the game. Sometimes it does it indirectly, and sometimes its up to the player to figure out how it wins them the game. If you’re a designer, you need to know how players win the game, because anything in your game that does not contribute to that will not be utilized by players.

There’s some distinction to be made here between goals, successes, and winning. A goal is anything you’re working towards. A success is any time you’ve done something to the extent that you have desired. In an RPG, for example, leveling up is a goal, and players will often make decisions that get them closer to it. You can also “succeed” at combat if you defeated all of your opponents. You could even say you “won” this combat, because it’s over. Essentially, winning is the end. Once you’ve won, you’re done. In games without winning, you just keep playing and making up goals, or have none at all and just play the game as an exercise.

Winning is everything

As I said, players will only do something if it can get them to win. Even if some other option is more fun, they will probably ignore it if winning is better. Why is this? It’s hard to say, but I think it’s because winning is the last step of a game. Why do you build a factory? To get more resources. Why do you need resources? To buy things worth points. Why do you need points? To win. Why do you need to win? To win. There is no further point. You can’t tell a player to do anything other than win because that’s the only thing they know going into the game. If you do try and tell them to do something else, you’d end up framing it as winning anyway. Tell somebody to get last place in a race, and they’ll consider last place the new first. Mechanically and thematically it may act like last place, but in the players’ minds it is first. You can’t avoid it.

Winning is debatable

So here’s the awkward part. Even though winning is by all means the only thing a player can decide they want, it’s also something they need to want. If I told you that you win Catan by having the most sheep, you’d tell me that’s terrible. The game would turn into a game of farming sheep, but all those other mechanics would be in there, all well designed and integrated. If a player decides that winning isn’t what the game describes, they’ll start trying to win a different game entirely, which has issues. They may even put self-imposed challenges on themselves just to make their victory feel more earned. Telling a player they have won means nothing unless they feel like they won.

Winning is singular

This is also where the issue with semi-coops crops up. It’s what inspired this article. You see games where you are all working together to do something, but one player still wins. Dead of Winter has everyone working together to survive a zombie apocalypse, but each player also has an individual goal to win. Castle Panic lets the player who defended the castle best win. But no one ever likes these rules! Some people think it’s because it goes against the nature of a cooperative game, but I think it has to do with the fact that players feel like they’re being told they won instead of feeling it. If I want to win, I will work towards winning within the limits of the game. Then, if I succeed, I’ll feel as though I’ve won. But if there’s two different ways to win, then which do I work towards? Since players make decisions solely on what can win, then they can only pick one of those. In the case of these coop games, you can’t win the private way unless you win the public way, so players decide that winning together is winning. Once they decide that, they don’t care about the other win condition. They’ll do it if they can but that’s about it.

Conclusion

I’m sorry this article couldn’t be more helpful. Winning is just such a strange, abstract construct that we as a society have determined is worthy of doing. Still, try and keep an eye out for what winning is doing to your game.